malice wrote:broken iris wrote:malice wrote:broken iris wrote:malice wrote:turned2black wrote:So the GOP doesn't want poor women to have access to abortions AND they don't want to feed the poor babies that creates. Aren't they essentially propagating this "welfare state" that they hate so much?
but they do support the right to bear arms including assault weapons, perhaps they just want poor women shot?
I think they telling them to be responsible and not get pregnant.
so... they want to control my sex life but not my ability to shoot and kill school children?
interesting
A responsible gun owner would not shoot children.
A responsible parent would not burden the state with a child they cannot afford. Having sex does not mean pregnancy, if the parties are behaving in a personally responsible manner.
*I am not necessarily endorsing this view, but I do see some logic in it.
just a poke in the eye, sorry about that.
yes, i agree, it would be ideal to ensure that people (obviously not just women) having sex were not having children and rampantly abusing social services as a result, but there's also a heavy sympathetic vibe between conservation Republicans and the more fundamentalist religious organizations which includes a desire to not provide birth control services or sex education to anyone (although I'd wager that lower income teens would benefit fairly well from that kind of service?) - and I won't even bother going into the idea of providing abortion services within this context since it's not worth the energy on anyone's part here to argue for or against. but it's still a bit misguided to me in exactly where the GOP should be laying down its support.
cutting off their nose to spite their face etc?
my general supposition is the GOP is just doing anything and everything it can to win support for their up and coming bids for power in the next administration without much regard for what the implications are of their actions, and where these tricky overlaps in ideals exist.
A few things regarding this:
1. It is true that it is far easier to criticize or just say whatever you want when you are out of power. Actually governing is much more difficult, and you may be forced to answer for promises and policies that make no sense.
2. There is a fairly coherent, if sometimes repulsive and often empirically inaccurate, ideology that can justify a lot of these seeming contradictions.
3. The party organization (which will say whatever it needs to say to get its members elected--which is its job, after all--hence the 180 on immigration after 2012) is not always on the same page as the ideological core of its base. And candidates are not always on the same page as either.
When we talk about political parties it is sometimes helpful to break them down into their component parts. There's not really a Republican or Democratic party in the monolithic sense that we often think about it.
There's the party members holding office, whose primary concern is often just to get themselves reelected. This may require honoring ideological commitments of their voters, addressing the needs of donors, or doing what is best for the people of their district even if it flies in the face of ideology (witness the constant about face on federal disaster relief you see with republicans). Ted Cruz may have hurt the national republican party, but he probably greatly expanded his own personal celebrity within the activist base of his party, increased his donor e-mail list, and established himself as a factional leader. even if he hurts the GOP's 2016 presidential chances, or costs the party the senate (even the house) in 2014, he still comes out ahead.
There is the party organization--the professional republican and democrats who mostly just want to see their party do well. This could mean pursuing the plurality strategy of karl rove under bush (there are enough conservatives out there that if we can just rile them up enough to vote we'll win and don't need to appeal to moderate voters), or reaching out to a wider audience when the base isn't robust enough (see republicans and immigration, right now). It may mean looking for more moderate or liberal candidates in some areas and more conservative candidates than others. This is not to downplay ideological commitments too much, but the goal is to win elections.
And then there is the party base. The rank and file voters. They could be motivated by ideology. They could be motivated by the quality of their life (this guy does stuff for me/my district). They could be motivated by partisanship (which is not the same thing as ideology. The tea party is ideological more than it is partisan). And even with ideology that varies from region to region.
Sorry, more unsolicited context than anyone likely cares about
